Alc and thc in the long term both suppress your ability to be happy without them. Your brain gets so use to them that once they are gone it doesn’t know how to maintain your dopamine levels properly.

My biggest advice. It’s ok to be sad, it’s ok to be bored. Infact it’s good to be bored on occasion. It drives passion and energy. Learn to take care yourself. Be gentle when you’re sad, talk with family, exercises, hand with friends. If you’re bored or sad it’s generally your bodies way of telling you that the environment your in needs a change. Being sad or bored or anxious doesn’t have to feel like the end of the world. It takes practice but it’s achievable. You just need to be vigilant and mindful of your emotions

I’m just sad all the time. When i drink i can stop being sad, and stop worrying about things like counting steps/breaths, the date, and whether the number of times i clicked my mouse was the right number before turning it off for the night.

Alcohol AND weed

Do you exist solely to do drugs??

I drink alcohol maybe once per year and I’ve never touched weed. I feel joy when I am around people and animals whom I love.

Never smoked weed or had a drop of alcohol here!

Honestly, your question is somewhat unsettling, as I’m not sure it is exactly healthy to only feel joy while under the influence of chemicals, so that might be something you should ask a medical professional about.

That said, surely you experienced joy as a child before using weed/alcohol at some point in your life, right? I guess in a lot of ways, I still feel that same spark of happiness or excitement I did when I was a kid. The things that sparked it may have changed somewhat, but the same feeling is there.

The problem with asking others how the heck they regulate without drugs is that they’re not you. They don’t have your brain or your hormones.

No solution from someone without the problem is likely to work and most people with the problem do not have a solution.

If i can find a sweet spot where i’m challenged but succeeding in an environment free of selfish unethical people, then i can get through the day without a toke. At the moment its bong-a-fucking-clock.

• Long walks, daily. This literally changed my life.
• Spending time with people I love. Quality time I mean, and really being together and appreciate it aka not sitting one next to the other while wasting our time in front of the TV or doom scrolling.
• Reading great books, writing. That helps too.
• Most important: be ok with things not being perfect or exactly as one wants them to be. And being ok with shit happening, be it around us or with us.

lol “joy”

You need a comprehensive detox. Both those substances are depressants. When you’re off the drugs, you’re not so much sober as hung over. It takes a while for the effects to wear off. The hangover is a bad time but it takes a lot longer than a day for your body to fully recover.

“Dissociative drugs make me happy.” Perhaps you have anxiety, depression, etc. Yeah, life sucks right now too. But always being high isn’t really a solution. Therapy, antidepressants, friends, and family can help but I can’t begin to guess what your situation is.

Sounds like you should be sober from weed too.

If your default state is high, you’re never sober. You’re just experiencing the hangover state between highs. Think of it as the weed version of delerium to an alchoholic. It’s not a physical hangover, so it’s not as obvious.

Stay sober for a few weeks. It’ll drag at first, but it’ll go away after a bit. You’ll even out your neurotransmitters and feel like yourself again. Then getting high on occasion will be an event, not a medication.

Anecdotally, people I’ve known who smoke everyday tend to be okay with things they shouldn’t be. The chemical joy seems to make them content with having a kind of shitty life and never actually doing anything. High activities just became their only activities when weed changed from weekends to everyday. I’m not saying this is true of everyone, but I’ve seen it happen more often than not to daily smokers.

Drugs and alcohol should be occasional modifiers to your life, not the default state. Give your chemistry a rest.

The most common way for me is with music, sometimes a song hits just right and it’s amazing. Doesn’t have to be a happy song to make me feel happy, just has to be the right song.

Weed gives me anxiety attacks and I’m allergic to alcohol.

When you become addicted to something, taking that something will often bring you back to baseline due to the cravings you have when not doing that addictive something. At least that’s how I see it. It’s like when smokers say they feel less stressed when they smoke, but really they just feel normal when they smoke because the addiction stresses them out when they’re not smoking.

I have never been high and don’t really drink much. I have been mostly depressed since about 2013 but happy maybe here and there. The clean air a few months into lockdown was amazing though.